Villiers had been leaning against the stone railing, but when Lisette and Roland began to sing, he joined her.
For a few moments they just listened. The lutes had a tremulous sound, as if notes were barely shaped before they slipped away. “Who spoke to death?” Lisette sang, high and clear and beautiful. “Let no one speak of death,” Roland answered her. His voice was a silky honey-smooth tenor that wove around hers. “What should death do in such a merry house?” they sang together.
Eleanor took another sip of her anisette and leaned her head back. Far above their heads the stars shone like silver buttons on a dandy’s waistcoat.
“Beautiful, aren’t they?” she said to Villiers.
“Pearls,” he said laconically. “Crushed to make stardust.”
She turned to meet his eyes and choked back a laugh.
“Let death go elsewhere—” Lisette sang, and broke off at Roland’s impatient gesture.
“You have the fingering wrong again. Listen.” He played the refrain again. And again.
“You look extremely beautiful tonight,” Villiers said suddenly.
“Me?” Then she remembered that Anne had painted her beautiful and smiled. “Thank you.”
“You are driving the poor poet mad with desire.”
Villiers was looking at her so coolly that she didn’t know what he thought of Roland’s admiration. Perhaps he was suggesting that she might like to marry Roland instead of himself? She took another drink and the liqueur burned down her throat. It sang to her of confidence and passion, of men who would never leave her.
“I’d like to kiss Roland,” she said, “before I make a final decision.”
It was only when he made a small incredulous noise in the back of his throat that she realized she had been less than clear. “Before I decide whether to marry him instead of you,” she clarified.
“You’ll decide on the basis of a kiss? His kiss?” A strand or two of Villiers’s hair had fallen from its ribbon and swung near the curve of his jaw. It wasn’t a poet’s jaw. It was a harsh, male jaw, the kind belonging to a man likely to issue decrees. And feel that women should pay attention to his proclamations.
Roland and Lisette had started singing again, something about love this time. “I made the prince my slave,” they sang together. “He was my lord for the space of a moon.”
“The space of a moon, my arse,” Villiers said into her ear.
Eleanor started. She hadn’t realized he’d moved close to her.
“Why don’t they just sing what they mean: I tupped him for a month?”
She gave him a frown.
“You’ll decide whether to marry me on the basis of his kiss?” His words were a low growl, and hung on the air.
“I put a ring on his finger and brought him to my house,” Lisette sang, and Roland joined in: “I clothed him in hyacinth and fed him honey-berries.”
Eleanor let her head fall back and examined the hyacinth-colored sky. Villiers made a small movement next to her, and she felt a surge of power. She knew exactly what to do. She turned her head, just slightly. She didn’t even smile at him; she just allowed the invitation to be in her eyes.
“Are you playing the siren with me?” he asked, his voice low, almost incredulous.
“Only for the space of the moon.”
“You surprise me,” he said, bending toward her. His lips tasted of anisette, like spice and like a man. She opened her mouth, remembering instantly how delicious a kiss could be. How the touch of lips could change the whole feeling of her body. She leaned toward him and gave him everything he wanted.
And he took it.
She realized, in the first second after their kiss began, that Villiers would always take what he wanted. He crushed her mouth, cupping her face in his hands and pulling her toward him.
Dimly, she thought how different this first kiss was from the one she had shared with Gideon, years ago. They were young and unpracticed. Gideon fumbled; she giggled; he apologized. It soon became clear that she enjoyed kissing far more than he did.
Probably all young men were the same: eager, driven by lust. He longed to touch; she longed to kiss.
She remembered chasing him around the barn once, trying to catch and kiss him, until he suddenly turned around and snatched her up, his hands falling on her—
“What?” a dark voice said in her ear.
“Yes?” she asked, startled.
“I’m kissing you, damn it.”
She looked up at him, confused. In the light falling through the windows behind them, Villiers’s eyes looked black. Eyelashes shaded his cheekbone, putting it into high relief. “I was thinking of something else,” she said honestly.
He stared at her for a second and then let out a howl of laughter that punctuated the singing she barely heard. “Between you and Tobias, I’m achieving a modicum of humility, for the first time in my life.”
“That I doubt,” she observed.
His eyes narrowed. “I suppose you were thinking of Astley.”
She felt a little dazed, as if the liqueur had gone to her head, and she couldn’t follow what he was talking about so she just shook her head. “I’m sorry if I punctured your vanity,” she said honestly. “It was a nice kiss.”
“Nice?”
He sounded incredulous. Apparently the Duke of Villiers was accustomed to women falling at his feet after one touch of his lips. “You taste like anise,” she said, settling back into her position. “I’m very fond of licorice. Did you ever find the plants and chew them when you were little?”
“No.”
She turned her head slightly, just enough so she could meet his eyes again. Of course he hadn’t wandered about fields grazing on wild plants. He was likely swathed in velvet from his toes to his collarbone from age five. No, four.
“Of whom were you thinking?” he asked. “Was it Astley?” There was something dangerous in his tone.
She took another sip of anisette. It slid sweet and hot down her throat, adding to the heat in her insides that had jumped to life with his lips. And that was making her nervous. She had now kissed two men in her life, Gideon and Villiers. Both of them made her feel slightly delirious, wild with pleasure, wanting nothing more than to kiss again and again.
She had the uncomfortable feeling that she was a wagtail by nature. Her mother would not approve. “In truth, it was the Duke of Astley,” she admitted.
Villiers’s expression didn’t change. “He is pretty. A maiden’s dream, in fact.”
“He was my dream,” she confessed. In the background, Lisette and Roland were quarreling over a musical notation of some sort or other. “After his father died, he started coming home with my brother during holidays.”
“From Eton.”
“Yes, exactly. I never really paid much attention to him, but then one day…well, there he was.”
It was embarrassing the way that Villiers’s lips made her want to lean over and—and nip him. Lick him.
“What then?” he inquired.
“Oh, it took us months to kiss,” Eleanor said lightly. “Though I spent a great deal of time dreaming about it. It’s quite common to fall in love at that age.”
He nodded, rather unexpectedly. Eleanor couldn’t imagine the Duke of Villiers in love with anyone. “You?” she asked.